BiographyHistory

Bio changes summary

Kim Wilkins is the daughter of Australian parents but lived in England until the age of four. She grew up in Redcliffe, Queensland and wrote her first novel at the age of nine. Wilkins played bass for the Vampigs and other rock bands and worked in a variety of jobs including fast food and typing.

Wilkins gained a first class honours degree in literature (1998), an MA (2000) and a Ph.D (2006) from the University of Queensland. Awarded for her fiction, Wilkins also won the University Medal for academic achievement in 1998.

Her interests include medievalism, adaptation, speculative fiction, and creative uses of mythology. She has been published in Australia, the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Russia, Italy and Germany.

Awards for Works

'Lying in a magic-induced coma, the King of Thyrsland is on the brink of death: if his enemies knew, chaos would reign. In fear for his life and his kingdom, his five daughters set out on a perilous journey to try to save him, their only hope an aunt they have yet to meet, a shadowy practitioner of undermagic who lives on the wild northern borders.

'No-one can stand before the fierce tattooed soldier and eldest daughter Bluebell, an army commander who is rumoured to be unkillable, but her sisters, the loyal and mystical Ash, beautiful but unhappily married Rose, pious Willow and uncertain Ivy all have their own secrets to keep from her — the kind of secrets that if revealed could bring disaster down upon not only them, but the entire kingdom.

'Waiting in the wings is stepbrother Wylm whose dealings with Bluebell's greatest enemy, Hakon the Raven King, would end Bluebell's dreams of revenge on his mother and propel his own desperate grasp for power.'

The Year of Ancient Ghosts2013selected work novella The Year of Ancient Ghosts features five novellas of the fantastic, all centred around medieval myth and history. A mother and her daughter come to the remote Orkneys to grieve, and find themselves instead dealing with a ghostly Viking legend. A dark-ages king doesn't realise his wife carries another man's child and she is desperate for him not to find out. A young woman, who has spent her whole life hiding her supernatural strength, discovers on the eve of her wedding that she is Odin's daughter. Sir Percival's sister finds herself trapped in a castle of bloodletting sorcerers with only her sexuality as a weapon. In the wake of the Norman conquest, the daughter of an abusive man falls in love with a Norman priest whose abilities blur the line between religion and magic.' (Publisher's blurb)